The Queue (21 page)
Authors: Basma Abdel Aziz
Individuals Accompanying the Patient
| Age | ID No: | |
| 1. Amani Sayed Ibrahim | 37 | 0307011602131 |
| 2. Ismail Mohamed Abdullah | — | — |
| 3. Ragi Sherif Saad | — | — |
| 4. Mariam Fouad Selim | — | — |
| 5. Maged Ahmed Fathy | — | — |
The last document in the file contained the names of people who carried Yehya to the nearest hospital when he was shot. Tarek did not recognize any of them except for Amani’s, which was at the top of the list. There were names of four others, three men and a woman, but no information about who they were. There weren’t even ID numbers, and they didn’t appear in the chart of friends and acquaintances, which accounted for most of the file. There was no one he could call to lead him to Yehya, and so he couldn’t offer any help, even though he knew how much Yehya was suffering. Yet he was unable to ignore it all, either, or to pretend as if none of it had happened. The constant turmoil, and his own helplessness in controlling his thoughts and feelings, were choking him. He had been suspended in this gray area, doing nothing for months since he had first opened the file. Now, suddenly, in a moment of wild rage, he decided to go to the queue in search of Yehya.
He arrived at nightfall. The air had a cold bite to it, sending shivers through his whole body, and there wasn’t enough light to make out people’s faces. It was impossible to search through the crowds one by one; a few people offered to guide him, but he had no answer for the question they each asked: “Where in the queue did he say he was?” He’d heard so much about this place, and had listened with intrigue to the stories that new doctors and nurses exchanged, but he’d never imagined that he would find himself lost among its crowds. He’d never imagined that he would fail to find the man whose body bore an injury that set him apart from everyone else, and whose face never left Tarek’s mind, not even while he slept.
He walked as far as he could toward the front, but he never arrived there. Each time he identified a gathering of people in the dim light and imagined he was finally at the head of the queue, he realized that it was just another stop, something like a rest stop. He gradually began to realize how vast the queue was, and what the driver had meant when he told passengers, “This bus goes to the end of the queue, just to the box; if you want the head of the queue, take the other bus.”
Yehya wasn’t there, or if he was, Tarek couldn’t find him. Lights went out and people began to settle down for the night, while others left to return in the morning, but Yehya didn’t appear among those sleeping or leaving. Tarek took out his phone and tried to call Amani again, but she didn’t pick up this time, either, as if she, too, had vanished. He felt an overwhelming sense of loneliness; he was a stranger here. There
was a cold sweat on his forehead, his stomach tightened, and he was seized by a single thought: a desire to return to where he had come from, that warm and well-lit room. He found himself in a microbus, automatically getting off in front of the hospital. Once there, he locked the door to his office behind him, swallowed several sedatives, and sat there alone and lost in thought, Yehya’s file open before him.
For weeks before she’d left her job, Amani hadn’t made any sales; she would call her usual customers and then lose her temper in the middle of the conversation by picking needless fights with them. When she hung up on one of their big clients, a hotel owner, her boss called her into his office, took a sizable cut from her salary, and threatened to fire her.
She didn’t object when two weeks later he told her to submit a request for leave without pay, but even after that things didn’t improve. She never left the house, and walked around in a haze all day and night. She was unnerved, anxiously awaiting something indefinable. She was wary when opening the door to anyone, even the mailman, and whenever the Gate’s announcements came onto the television she left the room.
She had nothing to do or think about, just her failure to get the X-ray. She blamed herself constantly, her thoughts spinning endlessly in circles as she thought about what she should have done, and all the mistakes she’d made in Zephyr Hospital. If it weren’t for her, they would have succeeded, and Yehya would have had the surgery without a hitch.
One night when she couldn’t sleep, she noticed several missed calls from Tarek on her phone. She thought about calling him back, but just the sight of his number terrified her. She imagined him telling her what tragedies awaited her, and her finger pressed the red button as if of its own volition, turning
off the phone. She lay in bed, tossing and turning, her head spinning with images again. She imagined Yehya beside her, she felt him breathing and the way he smelled, and then closed her eyes and saw a bewildering entanglement. The memory of Um Mabrouk’s daughter’s funeral blended with an image of Yehya standing in a cemetery, wearing a gravedigger’s uniform, and then he collapsed from loss of blood, dead.
Tarek visited her fitful dreams, too. He was looking at a bullet protruding from Yehya’s stomach, but he didn’t reach over to pluck it out. She saw Yehya entering the Gate and emerging on the other side, his body divided into horizontal strips, but the one with the bullet wasn’t there. Meanwhile, Nagy repeated that the bullet was part of an integral whole that should never be divided, per hallowed philosophical and sociological theories: one must deal with it in its natural state, from which it should not be removed, so as to not disturb the context. In a corner of her dream was a huge and terrifying bulldozer digging a deep grave for Yehya to be buried in, and a man standing beside it; his face was cruel and familiar, but she couldn’t tell exactly who he was.
Then the scene changed and she saw herself somewhere lavish and opulent; there were rich wood paneling, luxurious furniture, and supple carpets soft to the touch, but she didn’t dare tread upon them, her feet looked so wretched against everything else. There was a black sign emblazoned with the words
DEPARTMENT OF CONSPIRACIES
in brilliant golden letters; she was the only one there. Then she was back in the graveyard, and this time she walking through it in utter darkness, passing others moving around as she was, in silence. The basement: intuitively she knew she was in the basement, as if the word had been suspended in the air the whole time. She
didn’t see it, but taking the situation in with all her senses, she had a terrifying moment of realization. And when she knew she was imprisoned there forever she awoke in a panic, the hair on her forearms alert and trembling, her tongue stuck in her parched throat. The nightmares repeated in myriad variations throughout the night, until she no longer knew the difference between dreams and reality.
Winter had officially begun. So declared the message broadcast on television after the Gate’s daily announcement, and the sun that had divided Yehya’s body in two each noontime responded by slightly subsiding. There was a mild breeze, and he no longer needed to switch places with Nagy for the shade, but as the temperatures dropped, the throbbing and spasms in his left side grew stronger, until he moaned each time his chest filled and emptied of air. His urine was almost entirely blood now, and he could not bend at his knees or waist, so he spent all his time standing or stretched out on the sidewalk alongside the queue. He was rarely able to visit Um Mabrouk’s gathering place these days, and Nagy never left his side.
Ehab dropped by at the usual time, on his way back from the Booth, where he’d just learned the results of the interview he’d done a while back for the position in the communications department. He passed the middle section of the queue on his way, collecting some news, and discovered that Ines had left for good. Apparently, she’d married the man in the
galabeya
. Before she departed, she’d given everything she’d carried with her those past few months to the Southern woman’s son, telling him to give his mother her regards. Mabrouk had graduated from elementary school, even though he’d missed several exams while in the queue, and his kidney attacks had returned. Um Mabrouk had expanded her little shop, and on
the advice of the woman with the short hair she’d bought a few clay pots and planted fresh mint. Finally he told them that the screening committee had rejected most applicants for the job, claiming that they all lacked practical experience and adequate skills. He had been the first to be turned down.
Yehya was worried about other things and didn’t comment on Ehab’s news until he’d finished. Then he asked if there was any word from Amani, but Ehab said no. Nagy decided to call her, and chose just the right moment, rescuing her from a well of confusion and indecision. Terrified, she told him about the barrage of calls she hadn’t answered, and he gave the phone to Yehya. He spoke to her for less than a minute, but her words faltered while the din of the queue nearly drowned out Yehya’s feeble voice, and they were barely able to hold a conversation.
Tarek’s attempts to reach her caused them unforeseen anxiety, sending them into a discussion of all possible explanations. Maybe he’d decided to give them the X-ray, maybe he was thinking about doing the operation, maybe he, too, had been threatened, or had received an order to do it from deep within the depths of Zephyr Hospital. Whatever his intentions, they had to speak to him.
When Tarek arrived at the queue for a second time, preoccupied and withdrawn, he was easily able to find them because Nagy had described their location to him at length over the phone. He walked with Nagy to where Yehya sat on the ground, reading the newspapers that were scattered around him. Steam ascended from a cup, filled to the brim with hot tea, that he had placed by his left side, and Tarek was filled with shame when he saw it, knowing that Yehya was trying to ease his pain by keeping the area warm. He bent down to shake Yehya’s hand, and sat beside him on the ground. They cordially
exchanged a bit of small talk, tacitly agreeing not to delve into the details of the predicament.
Tarek admitted to himself that he had wanted to visit Yehya not only to confirm what he’d read in the file, but also to reassure himself. But seeing Yehya in person was different. His health truly was bad, worse than he’d read and worse than he’d expected. And there was nothing Tarek could do, nothing more than Yehya himself had done with the help of his friends.
Torrential rains poured down across the districts, flooding acres of land, including the plot that Shalaby and Mahfouz’s families farmed. Their huts disintegrated, swept away in a downpour that didn’t let up for days. Shalaby hurried home, making sure to take the medallion with him, and saw the ruin with his own eyes. The whole crop was destroyed, and the television and shower were gone, as were all of Mahfouz’s clothes. There was nothing but water, nearly up to his knees. Shaken by the wails of his mother, aunt, and five younger sisters, he realized that the best solution was to visit the Booth again.
He took proof of the damage with him and asked for a new plot of land for the families, far from the crushing rain, but the official sitting in the Booth accused him of trying to swindle him, and having caused the downpour in the first place. Shalaby had deliberately flooded the huts, he said with confidence, to acquire land he could build a house on, instead of the soggy farmland where they could only build these flimsy shacks.
Shalaby froze for a moment, waiting for the official to finish his joke, but the man was completely serious. He’d been through so much in recent weeks; ridiculed and insulted, his honor and dignity dragged through the mud. His commander and unit had abandoned him, as had the Gate; he’d even been forced to lie to people just to save face, and this was the final indignity. Shalaby trembled with rage and grabbed the official
by the throat with a roar, so suddenly that the man didn’t have a chance step back. Shalaby sent his rough fist between the iron bars, landing a blow to the official’s face, and then snatched the medallion from his shirt pocket and bashed his head with it before the people waiting behind him dragged him away in horror. Shalaby cursed and screamed that he was the cousin of a martyr, he had rights, the Gate owed it to him, and he would die like his cousin before abandoning his rights.
The story reached the entire queue within hours, people passed it around with a mixture of astonishment and delight, and the woman with the short hair announced it at her daily gathering. Some people expected that Shalaby would become the first person from the queue to be disappeared, but he returned a few days later. He was calmer, and insisted that he would stand in his place until the Gate opened, ignoring the questions that assailed him. A few days later, he confided in Um Mabrouk that he wanted to know the truth, but what truth that was exactly, he wouldn’t say.
As the queue swelled and extended into far-off, practically uninhabited districts, the Gate issued a decree for a wall to be built around everyone waiting. For their own protection, of course. This was especially important, given evidence that had emerged of people trying to take advantage of the situation; certain individuals were attempting to meddle with security, tranquillity, and righteous citizens’ minds. Not long after that, the people in the middle of the queue noticed that a man had appeared on the roof of the Northern Building, behind some kind of object on a tripod. It looked like a telescope, or an old film camera, and its barrel was aimed at the end of the queue. From the moment he appeared the man never abandoned his post, or at least no one ever saw him stand up or leave, not any
time of day. When a few veterans of the queue decided to take shifts and observe him, they confirmed uneasily that after six solid days, he hadn’t moved at all.
They had told her, before she was moved to the great nothingness, that nothing had happened, no injuries, no bullets, no files, nothing … but Amani hadn’t believed it. Even so, perhaps their claims were true. She considered this as she listened to the Gate’s breaking message, broadcast on the Youth Station, that a big-budget blockbuster had been filmed in the square recently. The countries involved in this joint production wanted it to look as natural as possible, so they kept the cameras and filming equipment hidden from view. The announcement added that it was one of the biggest action films in world history, explaining that this was why a few citizens had believed that there were bullets, tear gas, and smoke, even though there clearly hadn’t been anything like that, nothing except for standard special effects. The Gate called on everyone to remain calm, and avoid being misled by rumors that had been invented and spread by deranged lunatics. It explained that life was to go on as usual.